(_Concluded from page_ 137.)
But here come the graces of the forest, fifty at least in the herd--how
beautifully light and airy; elegance and pride personified; onward they
come in short, stately trot, and tossing and sawing the wind with their
lofty antlers, like Sherwood oak taking a walk; heavens! it is a sight
of sights. Now advance in play, a score of fawns and hinds in front of
the herd, moving in their own light as it were, and skipping and leaping
and scattering the dew from the green sward with their silvery feet,
like fairies dancing on a moonbeam, and dashing its light drops on to
the fairy ring with their feet of ether. O! it was a sight of living
electricity; our very eyes seemed to shoot sparks from man to man, and
even the monkey himself, as we gazed at each other in trembling
suspense.
"Noo, here they coom wi' their een o' fire an' ears o' air," whispered
the Ettric poet.
"Hush," quoth I, "or they'll be off like feathers in a whirlwind, or
shadows of the lights and darks of nothingness lost in a poet's
nightmare."
"A _sumph_ ye mean," answered Jammie.
"Hush, there they are gazing in the water, and falling in love with
their own reflected beauty."
"Mark the brindled tan buck," whispered one keeper to the other. They
fired together, and both struck him plump in his eye of fire; mine
seemed to drop sparks with sympathy: he bounded up ten feet high--he
shrieked, and fell stone dead; Gods, what a shriek it was; I fancy even
now I have that shriek and its hill-echo chained to the tympanum of my
ear, like the shriek of the shipwrecked hanging over the sea--heavens!
it was a pity to slay a king I thought, as I saw him fall in his pride
and strength; but by some irresistible instinct, my own gun, pulled, I
don't know how, and went off, and wounded another in the hip, and he
plunged like mad into the river, to staunch his wounds and defend
himself against the dogs. Ay, there he is keeping them at bay, and
scorning to yield an inch backward; and now the keeper steals in behind
him and lets him down by ham-stringing him: but when he found his
favourite dog back-broken by the buck, why he cursed the deer, and
begged our pardon for swearing; and now he cuts a slashing gash from
shoulder to chop to let out the blood; and there lay they, dead, in
silvan beauty, like two angels which might have been resting on the
pole, and spirit-stricken into ice before they had power to flee away.
But we must away to Sir Reynard's hall, and unsough him; this we can
do with less sorrowful feelings than killing a deer, which indeed,
is like taking the life of a brother or a sister; but as to a fox,
there is an old clow-jewdaism about him, that makes me feel like
passing Petticoat-lane or Monmouth-street, or that sink of iniquity,
Holy-well-street. O, the cunning, side-walking, side-long-glancing,
corner-peeping, hang-dog-looking, stolen-goods-receiving knave;
"Christian dog" can hold no sympathy with thee, so have at thee.
Ah, here is his hold, a perfect Waterloo of bones.
"The banes o' my bonnie Toop, a prayer of vengeance for that; an' Sandy
Scott's twa-yir-auld gimmer, marterdum for that." "An' my braxsied
wether," quoth a forester; "the rack for that, and finally the auld
spay-wife's bantam cock, eyes and tongue cut out and set adrift again,
for that." Now we set to work to clear his hole for "rough Toby"
(a long-backed, short-legged, wire-haired terrier of Dandy Dinmont's
breed) to enter; in he went like red-hot fire, and "ready to nose the
vary deevil himsel sud he meet him," as Jammie Hogg said; and to see
the chattering anxiety of the red-coated monkey, as he sat at the mouth
of the fox-hole, on his shaggy, grizzle-grey shadow of a horse, like a
mounted guardsman in the hole yonder at St. James's; it truly would have
made a "pudding creep" with laughter--"Reek, reek, reeking into th' hole
after Toby, with his we we cunnin, pinkin, glimmerin een, an' catchin
him 'bith stump o' th' tail as he were gooin in an' handing as long as
he could," as James said. O, it was a very caricature of a caricature.
But list, I hear them scuffle, they are coming out. Notice the monkey
shaking his "bit staff;" here they come like a chimney swept in a hurry,
they are out. "What a gernin, glowerin, sneerin, deevilitch leuk can a
tod gie when hee's keepit at bay just afore he slinks off," exclaimed
the poet, as Reynard was stealing away; but yonder they go before the
wind, down the sweeping, outstretched glen, like smoke in a blast.
Ay, there they go, two stag hounds, monkey, and grew, and Toby yelping
behind; what a view we have of them--the grew is too fleet for him, he
turns him and keeps him at bay till the hounds come up; now they are
off again, and now we lose them, vanished like the shadow of a dream.
We followed, and on our way we met a herdsman, with his eyes staring
like two bullets stuck in clay, or rather two currants stuck in a
pudding: he said he had met "the deevil, a' dress'd like a heelanman o'
tod huntin;" of course we laughed from the bottom end of our very
bowels; but that was not the way to undemonize him, no, he pledged
himself that he saw him "wi' his own twa een lowp off the shoather o' a
thing lik a snagged foal, an' gie the tod such a dirl 'ith heed, that he
kilt him deed's a herrin, an' we micht a' witness the same by gannin to
the Shouther o' Birkin Brae." And truly it was as he said, for we found
the mark of the little Highlandman's shillela on the fox's head, while
he himself was sitting a straddle on him, like "the devil looking over
Lincoln Minster," and the dogs lying panting round about.
On our road home to Hogg's we paid a visit to a wild-cat's lair in the
Eagle's Cragg, and of all the incarnate devils, for fighting I ever saw,
they "cow the cuddy," as the Scotch say; perfect fiends on earth. There
was _pa_ and _ma_, or rather _dad_ and _mam_, (about the bigness of
tiger-cats, one was four feet and a half from tip to tail) and seven
kittens well grown; and O, the spit, snarl, tusshush and crissish, and
mow-waaugh they did kick up in their den, whilst in its darkness we
could see the _electricity_ or phosphorescence of their eyes and hair
sparkling like chemical fire-works. But I must tell you the rest
hereafter, for my paper is out!